Microfluidic Cooling Turns Down the Heat On High-Tech Equipment

An anonymous reader writes with a snippet from HelpNet Security about a technology that sounds promising down the road for consumer equipment, but may land a lot sooner than that in high-end applications where cooling is critical: Thousands of electrical components make up today's most sophisticated systems – and without innovative cooling techniques, those systems get hot. Lockheed Martin is working with DARPA on its ICECool-Applications research program that could ultimately lead to a lighter, faster and cheaper way to cool high-powered microchips – by cooling the chips with microscopic drops of water. This technology has applications in electronic warfare, radars, high-performance computers and data servers. The micro-cooler is only 250 microns thick, and 5 millimeters long by 2.5 millimeters wide.

Comments

Re:Really?

[DigiShaman]

...a power supply rated at 500 W can deliver 500 W of power to the system regardless of its efficiency, the efficiency tells you how much power it must draw from the wall to deliver those 500 W it does not affect its output capacity, a 500 W power supply that is 90% efficient can deliever the same amount of power as one that is only 80% efficient. If the power supply is 80% efficient it needs 625 W(500/0.8) from the wall, those extra 125 W are turned into heat by the power supply, while a 90% efficient unit would only be drawing 555 W from the wall, meaning it is dissipating only 55 W as heat, or only 44% of the heat the 80% efficient unit was creating.

- Toms Hardware